Crump and the Charming Ops Manager

On yesterday’s Chicken-fat’s post I told about the clerk Billy who sorted parcels in the basement of the Federal Annex in Atlanta. Billy was one of about two dozen employees under a supervisor name Crump. Crump was a short bald headed chunky man who did not bother his employees. He let them talk and carry on – the job was getting done, that was the bottom line.

Crump had an hour radio show on Saturday mornings on a little am radio station in East Point. I think the show was mainly interviewing veterans. I never heard it, it was too far away to pick up on my radio.

One of Crump’s clerks died. He didn’t die while working but home sick. The funeral was something like 1:00pm. His crew reported at 5am and did not get off until 1:30. He thought they should go to the funeral of their fellow co-worker and gave them a couple of hours administrative leave at the end of their shift to go home and clean up and to the funeral.

A day later when the head of operations found out about the administrative leave he had a shit-fit. A plain and simple shit-fit. There was then, a type of Administrative Leave to “Attend a Veteran’s Funeral” which is what Crump issued out. I think it was meant to mourn high ranking generals. But it did not specify that. I still get the giggles when I imagine the look of the operation manager’s face when he was told about it.*

*The operation manager was so explosive and excitable anyway, I'm sure the news just added to his charm.

Good Old Motherly Post Office

The Postal Service operates the stations and branches I know short handed. It they have the need for 100 people some how they will have 90 people. They are always behind in getting out all the mail.

They are always shorthanded and just about treat a person who calls in sick as a criminal. – they are letting their co-workers down.

I got a call tonight from another retired Postal friend who heard that another friend we know, who is a carrier, just found out he has prostate cancer. He told his supervisor that it was very painful and he would have to stay out sick some. The supervisor talked him out of it, and the other day when he came back from his route his supervisor sent him out to cover another route.

That reminds me of the time I was a window clerk. After I was shut down one evening and handed in my money the station manager came by and said, “Oh Eddie, I meant to tell you earlier, your wife called wanted you to come home, her grandmother died.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Well, there was nothing you could do – and you know the line has been backed out the door all day.”

“Dave, has anybody ever told you are greedy and self-centered?”

It also reminds me of a female carrier who was out on her route and her son was ran over. Her husband worked in another town and couldn’t get to the hospital before their boy died. Neither did the lady carrier – she didn’t know anything about it. They were afraid to get the message to her because there were no one available to relieve her.

It is no wonder that some rank and file line postal employees go postal from time to time.

Sunday Morning Inspirational Talk

Have you ever noticed in management when a new manager is assigned a team he feels he must do something pretty quickly to impress upper management. He has to make a big visual change.

I have noticed while working in the Postal Service we would change something drastically in the operation or the physical structure about every 6 to 24 months, that seems to be the life span of a line supervisor.

The bad thing, whatever is changed usually just change back to the way it was with a newer supervisor making his mark. And the cycle goes on and on.

One new supervisor thought he would give us cause to work harder if we knew more about mail operations. He would give herd us all together and educate us on the flow of mail – the only thing, he was fairly new and did not know much about the flow of mail. He said it was simple, our job was to get the mail from Point A (us) to Point B, the person receiving the mail. Somebody said, technically Point A would be the person mailing it and we would be Point B, and the carriers would be Point C and the postal patron would be Point D – then you have other points as well, such as primary – sorting the incoming mail, but first sometimes you have to unload airplanes or railroad boxcars, or 18 wheelers… us explaining all that to our new supervisor cost less mail to be sorted, so we had to work at the end, to make up for the unproductive time talking about points a, b, and so on, which was at the overtime rate.

One bright supervisor got the idea of not having scheme knowledge – when the mail came into the deliver facility, the first group would sort the mail aphetically and the next group would be divided into groups by the letters, that would look the name of the streets in the scheme books and sort to the carrier that way. It was very costly, paying much overtime and delaying the mail weeks – there were so much mail backed up, people could not move around to work. Then they decided to go back the way it was… that was a smart decision.

And all these noble experiments are costly, which are passed on to the consumer. Tch tch.

Yikes! It is Sykes! or How To Get Ahead

When I worked for the Postal Service in Atlanta M. Sykes was a union representative. He pretty much won most of the cases against management that he worked on. He was smart, a smooth taker, and when either a worker or a manager tried to pull a fast one, he saw through it and called them on it.

He was a black slim man that was a nice dresser. He knew the score, so to speak. He also had a wit about him I remember.

I was a data technician in the time keeping office. It was a division of the Finance Department headed by a bully of a guy, with the initials to his last name M. Over the years we watched M. bring in his relatives and give them give them jobs of management. It was plain and simple nepotism.

Chuck and I sat down and made notes on who was related to whom and how quickly they rose in the ranks. We carried our notes to M. Sykes.

He carefully went over our notes as we verbally told him and he made little side notes along side our notes when asking more detailed questions.

He said he was going to see M. tomorrow and back him up against the wall with this.

Hot dog! Finally something was going to be done about the blunt nepotism in the fiancé office.

We didn’t see M. Sykes the next day, so we didn’t know what happened. We reported at midnight and I think Sykes work day began at 10:30pm.

The following night he wasn’t there again and we asked his supervisor where was he. He told us he had been reassigned. I quickly thought of what must have happened and unfortunately I was right.

At 8:00am smartly dressed Sykes, in his 3 piece suit,reported to work as a new manager in finance. He avoided us ever-since.

Greed wins every time.

Mangement - Can't Live Without 'Em...or?

From years working at the postal service and about half that time spent in Time and Attendance I could not help but noticing that when an employee is punished it is usually done by clipping the amount of his check. They intentionally messed with one livelihood and seemed to have enjoy it.

This is done usually by a suspension and sometimes the suspension time will be where it covers before and after a holiday, which again hits the employees in his or her means of earning an income. If one is in a non-pay- status before and after a holiday that employee will also be docked holiday pay.

However, when a member of management blunders there is no repercussions. I have seen many times the paperwork after a member of management mistreats an employee by suspending him, and the employee carried the ruling to a higher level and was awarded his pay that he lost while suspended, and in the letter from the arbitrator more or less scolded the manager and slapped his hands. But that is all. It didn’t cost the manager a thing.

I know of one manager, Bob, who has never had one of his punishing decisions concurred by an arbitrator. Twice, not once, but twice, the Postal Service, had to award the abused employee (female each time) a cash settlement up way up in the thousands of dollars for a sexual harassment case. At least one of those decisions Bob cannot even work in the same building as the person he harassed.

Yet, he has not been punished at all… and his hands were only slapped someplace in a long letter.

Unmanaged get punished, usually monetarily, and managers don’t – and they do make some very costly errors.


But on a lighter note, one time I turned in a suggestion. Shortly after I turned mine in – according to the dates – my immediate manager turned in the same suggestion, worded the same. He got a $50 cash award. I wrote the Awarding Committee with a copy of my suggestion and asked when was the other suggestion turned in (then I didn’t know it was my boss). It turned out there was “a mix-up” and when all was said and done I got the $50 cash award.

That sort of reminds me of the above today's Dilbert cartoon .

You Are Fired!

About 40 years ago the Atlanta Post Office’s Postmaster was a man we will call Gregory. I’m not sure Gregory knew about the flow of mail, that was what his lieutenants were for. However, Gregory was an excellent speaker. He knew how to dazzle employees with statistics giving meaning to their jobs.

I remember when I was among the 50 or so new employees that sat quietly as he spoke to us. He said if the growth trend continues at its present rate, in another 50 years they will need the same amount of employees in the Atlanta Post Office, as they are citizens in Atlanta now. Isn’t that impressive? And it was also job security. However, what we didn’t know, as he spoke, they were working on automation.

He went on to say there are people in Atlanta very sick that needs their medicines. He said if they don’t receive their medicine through the mail in a timely fashion they will die. He said when one of them doesn’t receive their medicine when it is suppose to arrive they get on the phone and call him and he gets to the bottom of it (he banged on the podium angrily)!

“Gosh!!! What a nice heroic man wise man!” we were pumped up think. He was very inspirational. Also, that was all hot air.

Gregory’s true self came out several times before he retired when I worked in Atlanta.

Of course the getting the mail to people is a 24 hour operation. The bulk of clerks that sorted the mail by various ways worked at night.

On more than one occasion at the Federal Annex, where most the mail went through then, Gregory appeared in the middle of the night wearing Bermuda shorts, and a golf go-to-hell hat carrying a golf club. The floor managers would walk with him. He pointed at various black people men and women, and say “fire him, fire him, fire her, fire him, fire those two…” and so on. Then he would go to the next floor and repeat the process.

Whoever he pointed at a supervisor in the know would go tell the person to go sit in the break room until he came and got them. Most of the them knew the game and knew and knew it would be a good time to sit around and watch TV. If they were knew and didn’t know, when they were “temporarily fired” somebody told them the game.

Gregory never told them to fire a white person.

On one such firing a new aggressive young tall blond girl observed and overheard Gregory saying “fire that person with the hat on and that one with the red shirt and…” and saw the supervisor go tell the employee something and they would leave.

She came to their rescue. She walked up to the postmaster and ask why were he firing them, they were working like they were supposed to. He was speechless! Nobody talked back to the Postmaster, leader of 8000 employees. He was furious and sputtering. He left the workroom floor.

But he didn’t leave without telling a supervisor he wanted her name.

Later in the morning a supervisor walked up to her and told her to report to the Postmaster’s office.

She went. The outer office where the secretary and gopher sit was empty. She heard noises in the inner office. She went in. There he was sitting there steaming. He chewed her out saying she was fired and fussed back saying she was going to report him and they were screaming at each other and he was moving around in his chair so heavily, it tilted over and fell.

Then he started vomiting. He got vomit all over his face and clothes, stood up again, and told her she was fired, get out, and then fell again.

The girl left. When she walked out to the outer office the secretary was coming in. She told the secretary that she needed to call an ambulance the postmaster was very sick.

The next night she went back to work, as if nothing had happened, and except telling a lot of people, like me, the incidence was never spoken about again. She was still there when I transferred to Marietta in 1981.

Post Office Blues

A postal story:

A couple of friends I worked with were always saying they were not afraid of management. I didn’t see any reason to doubt them, they did their job and a little more, which we all did.

One day while I had my earphones on working I heard a supervisor screaming in a loud voice. I turned off my music to hear better – after all, nosy is nosy. A supervisor named Vince was shouting at a female carrier calling her a slut and a whore and he was going to be on her, she might as well start packing her bags – she was leaving.

I asked my two co-workers what that was about and filled me in on the details, which I forgot now, it has been at least seven or eight years ago. But I do remember it was all his fault – she stood up to him when she was being falsely accused.

Later the carrier asked us each if we had heard Vince shouting at her and I said I did. The other two, which heard more of it than I did said they didn’t hear a word.
She asked me to put in a letter what I heard, which I did. I did not write down the details the co-workers told me, because I didn’t hear that part. That part was hearsay.

The letter I wrote was the last straw. I didn’t know he had a history of things like that from the other branch he worked at. I think he was forced to retire early (Supervisors rarely get fired).

He went on a drinking spree and had a stroke.

Once before he retired he visited two female carriers at their home. He was heavily under the influence. He told them they were living in sin as lesbians. Then he passed out on their couch.

His wife was/ is a high position in region office, which may not had anything to do with his actions, but again it might – if it allowed him to get away with so much.

I think he thought he was a good person trying to do the right thing. Tch tch.

The Disappearing & Reappearing Manager

Yesterday evening Anna and I had dinner at a franchise - type of Restaurant, but will remain nameless.

When we entered I noticed the manager sitting at a booth going over a job application and interviewing a potential employee. During our meal I would see the man circulating and mingling with customers, chatting with people sitting at tables eating and he seemed to be doing his public relations part of the job very good.

Anna came across a long human hair in her food when she was almost finished. We decided it would be best to let them know about it so that they may not make the same mistake in the future. Anna went up to the hostess and told showed her the hair. She offered a new plate and Anna said she didn't want any more, she just wanted to tell them of it.

The young lady took the plate with the morsel of food and the hair around the corner out of sight. I assumed she went to the manager's office to tell him a human hair was found in the food.

Guess what! He did not come out. Up until that point in time, just about every place in the dining room you would look, you would see the manager being friendly with the customers. Now, he was out of sight.

We finished our drinks, which probably took another 6 to 10 minutes. Still no manager.

Then we left. We got in the car and as I was backing out, I could see in the rearview mirror, looking in the restaurant's window that the manager had reappeared and was hobnobbing with the customers.

That must be a magic show they have there: Now you see him, now you don't!

Screw-ups in High Position.

Have you noticed, when working for an organization, when the higher-ups of the company bring someone in from the outside for a high position and then that person proves to quiet a screw-up, upper management will not admit their mistakes and keep claiming their man is doing a great job? The new screw-up manager really has to do a lot, or the reverse of that, nothing, to get the boot.

The best example I can think of is when Bush told FEMA Director Michael Brown, "Brownee, you are doing a heck-of-a-job!" days before he fired him.

Why did Bush claim Brown was doing a heck-of-a-ob? Maybe because Bush brought him aboard as a political favor without really having him or his résumé' checked out. If Brown looked good, Bush would look good. It is simple logic. But, finally, enough was enough, or too little was too little, so Brown had to go. And he might even had to play the Royal Scapegoat.

Which, brings up something else. Bush continues to screw up. But the some of the people who I know who voted for him said they would vote for him again. I think they don't want to admit they made a mistake. It must be an ego thing.